Gone To An Aunts Remembering Canadas Homes For Unwed Mothers Anne Petrie by Anne Petrie 9781551996097, 155199609X instant download after payment.

Instead she had to hide. Most likely she would be sent away to a home for unwed mothers, where she would stay in secrecy until her baby was born & given up for adoption. “Gone to an aunt’s” was the usual cover story, a fiction that everyone understood but no on talked about –until now. 

In Gone to an Aunt’s, journalist & long-time television host Anne Petrie takes us back into these homes for unwed mothers. Most cities in Canada had at least one home, several as many as five or six, most of them run by religious organizations. Here, in institutional settings, the girls were kept out of sight until their time was up & they could return to the world as if nothing had happened. 

Seven women –including the author – recount their experiences in Gone to an Aunt’s, talking openly, some for the first time, about how they got pregnant; the reaction of their parents, friends, boyfriends, & lovers; why they wound up in a home; & how they managed to cope with its rules & regulations –no last names, no talking about the past –& the promise of salvation that could come only through work & prayer. 

Gone to an Aunt’s is a profoundly moving & compassionate –even alarming – account. It comes as a reminder that we not get too wistful for the supposedly innocent times before the sexual revolution. That innocence, Petrie shows vividly, was a charade made believable only because the thousands of girls who had broken the rules were hidden away.